


This Means War

by chellerrific



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Gen, Sibling Rivalry, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-13
Updated: 2011-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-29 06:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chellerrific/pseuds/chellerrific
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started at the family dinner where Apollo gave Artemis a banana split.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Means War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skypirateb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skypirateb/gifts).



> For Philippa, written during Dissertation-a-thon 2011.

It started at the family dinner where Apollo gave Artemis a banana split. “Hey, sis, I made this for you. Extra nuts!”

Artemis knew better than to not be suspicious. “What’s in it?”

“Ice cream. Bananas. It’s a banana split, what do you think is in it?”

Apollo was an amazing liar in most circumstances, but in conversation with his twin was not one of them. He seemed to be telling the truth: it was an ordinary ice cream dish and it would not have her speaking in rhyming couplets or breaking out in boils or anything like that. So, she muttered thanks and took a bite.

It tasted fine. Good, in fact. _Really_ good. She was halfway through it before she realized everyone was staring at her.

Then she took a look down at the banana split, a good, hard look at the way the banana and the ice cream scoops were laid out.

She spit her mouthful back into the bowl involuntarily, shoved it away from herself, and stormed out of the room, peals of laughter following her every mortified step.

Apollo appeared directly in front of her. She stopped short and glared at him with all her might. “Aw, come on, sis, it was just a joke!”

“A really, really not funny one!” she spat.

“It was hilarious! Lighten up!”

Apollo probably would have spontaneously combusted under her gaze if he weren’t immortal.

“Come on. They wouldn’t laugh so hard if you could laugh too!”

“I don’t laugh at things that aren’t funny!”

“Whatever. You laugh at that overused heart/hart pun every time.”

Artemis put a hand over her mouth to stop from giggling. She was still mad! “So do you!”

“Touché.”

She shoved her way past him. “Just go back to laughing with everyone else.”

So he shrugged and went back to dinner. That banana split wasn’t going to finish itself.

* * *

They didn’t see one another much until a few days later when Apollo appeared beside her in the field where she sat, his face red with anger. “ _What_ did you do to my iTunes library?”

Artemis calmly continued to sharpen the heads of the arrows in her lap. “I’ve never had an interest in libraries. You know that.”

“Not _that_ kind of library. My _iTunes_ library. My _music_ library.”

Artemis shrugged and shook her head.

“Don’t give me that. I know it was you, except you had to have some kind of help, because you don’t know how to work a computer and I can’t imagine you have any idea what _Kidz Bop_ is.”

Artemis just stared at him with wide innocent eyes and a carefully blank face that he didn’t buy for a second.

He took a deep breath. “ _Somebody_ deleted my music files and replaced them with the Kidz Bop versions! You might not have the _capability_ to do that, but you certainly have the _motive_.”

Artemis set a sharpened arrow aside and moved onto the next one. “I’m sure there are people who have both the ‘motive’ _and_ the ‘capability.’ Why don’t you bother some of them?”

“Because this has that extra vindictive spiteful edge that is unique to you,” Apollo pointed out with a smile that was equal parts sweetness and poison.

“I will accept the compliment with thanks, but I’m afraid it is still undeserved.”

“And you forget that even if I wasn’t your brother, I’m still the god of _truth_ and I can tell when you’re _lying through your teeth like right now for example_.”

Artemis just shrugged again.

Apollo clenched his jaw and made a sound like wounded prey shortly before its hunter put it out of its misery, then he disappeared with a blast of the Kidz Bop version of “Forget You.”

Persephone emerged from the woods nearby, her arms full of wildflowers. “Was that Apollo just now?”

“What tipped you off, all the hot air?”

Persephone sighed and sat down, then started to work on a wildflower garland. “He is _so_ going to figure out it was me. But we’re even now, okay? You have to stand by your side of the bargain!”

“I will not tell your mother that I caught you sneaking back in yesterday morning,” Artemis said solemnly.

And then Persephone explained what a brofist was, and Artemis reluctantly allowed herself to be engaged in one.

* * *

Shortly afterwards, Artemis left Olympus for a couple of weeks on a hunt. When she opened the door to her place upon her return, she discovered that Apollo had used the time to get his revenge.

The walls were covered in posters: huge glossy pictures men in various states of undress. Hairy men, smooth men, men of all colors and sizes. The furniture was covered in leopard print (Dionysus’ touch, she suspected) and was arranged so that the bed was the focal point. Somewhere inside there was a speaker system (not hers) blasting “Push It.”

“You’ve redecorated!” Apollo said, appearing at her shoulder. “Nice! I like it!”

Artemis spun around, unable to look at the display before her for another second. “Put it back to normal! And turn off that noise!”

“Love this song!” Apollo said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “ _This dance ain’t for everybody, only the sexy people!_ ”

“ _Apollo_!”

Apollo froze mid-pushing it. “What?”

“Change it back to how it was!”

He arched an eyebrow. “Now, Arty. That would involve me going inside, and I know men aren’t allowed to violate your inner sanctum.”

Artemis slammed the door shut behind her, cutting off the music mid-line.

“Amazing soundproofing, by the way,” Apollo said with a nod.

Artemis glared. “It was a necessity, given the neighborhood.”

* * *

Apollo was no fool; he knew Artemis wasn’t going to let something like that go. He found himself triple-checking everything he ate, watching his back with extreme vigilance, and sleeping with one eye open (literally).

And then finally his bros convinced him to relax and have a night out with them (he’d forgiven Persephone for the Kidz Bop thing; after all, it had been in pursuit of making sure she could still get laid regularly, and he couldn’t exactly fault her for that). It was late when he stumbled back to his quarters and there was a giggling nymph draped on his arm and he was horny and vulnerable. He should have known that’s when any hunter worth her bow would strike.

“Hello,” Artemis said, snapping on a light.

Apollo sat up with a start. He still had a pair of shorts on, but he was _mostly_ naked, and so was the nymph. But his sister wasn’t freaking out. She was staring at him steadily. His wine-addled brain was slow to piece it together: his sister’s ability to compartmentalize was biting him in the ass. To Artemis there was her brother the man, and there was her brother the fool. Normally when nearly-nude females were involved, he was her brother the man. Clearly she had managed to keep him in her brother the fool territory just for this special occasion. Touching.

“Don’t let me stop you,” she said. “Go back to what you were doing.”

It would have served her right if he had. It would have served her right if he’d just screwed that nymph right in front of her. But she was taking a calculated risk, and she knew he would not call her bluff.

She was right on that count. Nothing made him lose wood faster than the thought of his virgin baby sister sitting just feet away, staring at him. He sunk down onto his elbows, his head dropping back. This was physically painful.

“We can talk, if you’d rather,” she said while he agonized over this. “I’m curious about what he tells girls to get them into this position. He doesn’t use those lines on me. Did he tell you that Lord Byron was his son? Yes, he’s awfully proud of Georgie. Funny story about that, though. I heard he’s not even Polly’s boy—he’s actually Zeus’s.”

Apollo sat all the way up now, sobered with just a few short words. “ _Who said that_? Did Zeus say that? Is Zeus telling people that?”

Artemis gave a careless shrug. “I’m inclined to believe it’s true. I mean, neither of you is exactly the paragon of discretion.”

“Byron was _my_ son!” Apollo said, jerking a thumb at his bare chest. “ _Mine_! How could he have been—I mean, come on! The pet bear thing? That is totally my influence! Hello, his sense of fashion? Do you think that sort of thing just _happens_?”

“You do seem like you could be brothers.”

“We are _not_ brothers!” Apollo shrieked. “He was my _son_! Do you want _details_ of how I banged his mother? Because I could give you _details_!”

“I’m sure our father could tell a similar story of his own exploits with the woman.”

“No he couldn’t because that _so_ did _not_ happen, okay! I haven’t even _mentioned_ the poetry! Who’s _god_ of poetry again? _Hmm_?”

Artemis pretended to think. “Oh, yes, how could I be so silly. I forgot about Hermes.”

“ _He’s not Hermes’ son either_!” Apollo was literally flailing now.

“I’m going to go now,” the nymph muttered, but Apollo was in such a righteous fury he didn’t even notice as she slipped out into the night.

Artemis yawned. “I didn’t realize how late it was. I’m going to be off then. Can I borrow one of your volumes of Byron for some bedtime reading? I understand if you don’t want to hang onto them anymore.”

“ _He was totally my son okay I don’t ever want to hear you or anyone else say otherwise_!”

* * *

The next morning Apollo was sober and rational enough to realize what Artemis had done to him: not only had she successfully cockblocked him that night, she had manipulated him into cockblocking _himself_ for the foreseeable future. He could tell by the giggles and stares from the nymphs and dryads, who all abruptly stopped talking upon seeing him as he walked through Olympus. Word got around fast.

All the same, the more important matter on his mind was _no seriously, was Zeus saying shit about Byron being his son?_ Even though there was the logical part of him that realized his paranoid sulking was playing right into Artemis’s hands, he couldn’t stop himself.

In-between his sulking, though, he devised a plan for retaliation that would be both swift and public.

* * *

It was time for one of Zeus’s brief interim Council meetings. Apollo had always been under the impression that he did it as a loophole for having meetings without having to invite Hades. (It also meant no Dionysus while he was on probation. Bummer.)

Apollo watched Artemis as she walked into the room to her seat. She eyed him back warily. He just smiled jauntily.

“All right, everybody, shut up and sit down and let’s get this over with,” Zeus growled in a tone of voice that let them all know he was battling a fierce hangover.

Artemis cast one last glance at Apollo, then sat down.

Instantly the bottom of the throne snapped in two and she was lying flat on her back on the floor.

“Mom was right; there _is_ a first time for everything,” Hermes said, lazily snapping a photo with his iPhone.

Apollo laughed triumphantly as he sat down on his own throne. As soon as his weight was settled on it, it melted into sticky goo all around him. “What the—!” He let out a strangled cry. “This is my favorite shirt!”

“Good!” Artemis snapped from the floor.

Apollo would have jumped to his feet, except the goo held him back, nearly causing him to stumble, but the goo stopped that as well. The end result was the he mostly just kind of wobbled in place and flailed a bit. So he settled for shouting impotently from where he was stuck. “I didn’t even _do_ anything first!”

“It was a pre-emptive strike!” Artemis shouted back.

Apollo turned his glare on Athena, whom he had no doubts was the one to plant _that_ particular suggestion in his twin’s head.

Athena just continued to read her mortal newspaper. “Oh, that Garfield,” she muttered with a small shake of her head. “He _really_ does not like Mondays.”

“The next person who talks,” Zeus said loudly enough to make everyone shut up and no louder, “will be the next main attraction in the Electrical Parade. And they only still have that running in Tokyo so I hope you like sushi and also being electrified.”

No one spoke.

“You two,” he said, pointing at Artemis and Apollo. “The fuck?”

“He started it!” Artemis shouted from the floor, where she was stuck like a flipped turtle.

Hermes hummed the Electrical Parade theme under his breath.

“He asked me a question,” Artemis snapped.

“Just because I gave you ice cream!” Apollo shouted, struggling against the goo that held him fast.

“Oh you know exactly what you did!”

Zeus snapped his fingers and gags appeared over both their mouths. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“Dear,” Hera said, reaching for his hand. “I think it sounds like the little dears could use a bit of a time out.” She kept her voice even as she spoke, but nobody missed the ghost of a smirk on her lips.

And that was how Artemis and Apollo came to spend the entirety of a Council meeting standing in opposite corners of the room, facing their respective walls and fighting the almost overwhelming urge to snipe at each other—Zeus had promised to extend the punishment if that happened, and Hera volunteered to watch them, and if there was one thing they could both agree on, it was that nothing was worth that.


End file.
